


Chapter 1: Just Like Tom Sawyer

by dc_comic_girl



Series: The Story of Mickey Milkovich [1]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gallavich, Gen, M/M, Mickey Milkovich - Freeform, POV Mickey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 13:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18389132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dc_comic_girl/pseuds/dc_comic_girl
Summary: Mickey Milkovich's first day of Head Start. First chapter in an on-going cannon compliant story of Mickey Milkovich's life.





	Chapter 1: Just Like Tom Sawyer

**Author's Note:**

> I had an idea a while ago to write Mickey's story, from start to present. I feel like there was a lot that could be expanded on from his character in the first few seasons. Anyway, this is my first story so please bare with me. I have lots of ideas for this story and have already written a chapter from season 9 that I can't wait to publish, so I hope to update regularly. 
> 
> Characters not mine, and in future chapters and dialog from the show is obviously not mine. Eventually is going to focus more on the Gallavich ship. Please enjoy!

When her youngest son turned three years old, Lydia Milkovich immediately signed him up for Head Start. It would be nice to believe that it was because she wanted him to get a good start on education, but the truth was she wanted him out of the house. Lydia never wanted to be a mother. She wasn’t cut out for it. What she _wanted_ was to mainline some smack and get some goddamn sleep. Christ, she already had a baby girl screaming at all hours of the night. She didn’t need a three-year-old pulling at her fucking apron strings all hours of the day.

Mickey, luckily, was thrilled to start pre-school. His brothers were always off somewhere during the day and his father had been in jail since Mandy was born. That just left him alone with his mom and the baby all day.

His mom was fine, he supposed. If you had asked if he loved her, he wouldn’t hesitate to answer with a dutiful yes. She would sometimes yell and sometimes hit him, but never as much as his father would, and she spent most of her time asleep on the couch. You couldn’t really hate someone who was asleep all the time. Besides, a couple times a week, she would even lay out cereal for him and his brothers for when they woke up in the morning. It always made him feel a little fuzzy inside, the mornings she would remember.

No, he definitely loved his mother. He just wasn’t sure he _liked_ her.

His baby sister Mandy could be placed in the same category. She was soft and squishy and, even at three, he felt a sense of obligation to his little sister, but she wasn’t exactly fun. She screamed and cried and couldn’t play any games. When she was born, he figured she would grow out of it sooner or later, but now she was almost a year old and things were not looking good.

School offered an opportunity to be out of the house for seven hours every day. Somewhere where a baby wasn’t crying or his mother wasn’t screaming at him to “change her goddamn diaper, Mickey, for Christ’s sake!” School was where other kids his age would be, and he might even make a friend or two who wouldn’t shove him off like his older brothers did when he asked to play.

The first day of Head Start, Mickey was up with the sun. He knew his brothers wouldn’t be awake yet but hoped his mother might be up to see him off on his first day.

Alas, upon walking into the kitchen, he found it deserted. He felt a twinge of rejection for a moment but brushed it off quickly. He had been waiting for this day since his mother had signed him up, and nothing was going to ruin his good mood. With the help of a chair, he was able to pull the cereal box down from the cupboard himself. He looked in the fridge but couldn’t find any milk. He shrugged, sitting at the table with the box. Iggy had told him last week that Head Start gave out free food that you didn’t even have to steal, so he was sure he wouldn’t be hungry for long once he got to school. He picked through the box to pull out a couple marshmallows and popped them in his mouth.

After pulling out as many marshmallows as he could from the cereal box, he walked back to his room to get dressed. He pulled on the shirt on his floor that had the fewest Alpha-getti stains and his only pair of jeans. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth with cold water and the tiny bit of tooth paste he could squeeze from the almost empty tube. He walked to his mom’s room to find her passed out, one leg and one arm hanging off the bed.

“Mom?” he whispered but received no response.

“Okay, I’m leaving now,” he said a little louder, and his mother grunted in response.

He walked to Mandy’s crib and saw her standing up and holding onto the bars of the crib, watching him with wide eyes. A pang of guilt hit him for leaving Mandy all alone all day while he was off to have the best day of his young life.

 _But she’s not alone_ , he thought to himself. _Mom is here with her_. The thought didn’t bring him as much comfort as he had hoped, so he silently promised to spend some extra time with her when he got home tonight.

“Bye-bye, Mandy,” he said, quickly pecking her on the top of the head.

“Bye-bye,” she said back, sniffling from what he hoped was just another cold and not tears.

 

* * *

 

 

Luckily, any guilt he felt about leaving Mandy was all but forgotten as Mickey rounded the corner towards the large public school. He saw swarms of kids and grown ups milling around the front door and realized with some alarm, that he was probably late. He picked up the pace and jogged the rest of the way to a white, folding table that had been set up in the front yard. At the table was a pretty girl with a very high ponytail and a very large smile. There was a bit of a line in front of him, and Mickey realized with some unease that all the kids were holding the hand of a grown up.

The boy directly in front of him was short and had a mop of curly brown hair. He looked disinterested in the happenings around him and seemed more focused on a book he was reading, which didn’t seem to have any pictures at all. With the boy was a woman with mismatched socks and blonde pigtails (Mickey thought this was strange, because he had never seen a grown up with pigtails) and two other children. There was a girl who looked about seven or eight, with frizzy brown hair mostly tied back in a ponytail and a boy who looked about Mandy’s age with bright red hair sitting in a stroller.

The woman was twirling in circles while the girl kept fussing with a stain on the older boy’s shirt.

“Isn’t this exciting?” the woman asked in a breezy, daydreamy voice. “Lip’s first day of school! Before you know it, I’ll be dropping you off at college!” She continued to twirl and didn’t seem to notice, Mickey thought, that her children weren’t really paying any attention to her.

“It’s fine,” the boy (who Mickey now assumed to be Lip) whined, pulling away from his sister. “Leave it alone, Fiona!”

“How the hell did you manage to get syrup all over shirt?” Fiona mumbled, licking her thumb and rubbing furiously at Lip’s collar.

“It’s fine!” the boy yelled, exasperated. He looked around in frustration and desperation. His eye suddenly caught Mickey’s and Lip pointed at Mickey’s chest. “Look! His shirt’s stained worse than mine and no one’s bothering him.”

Mickey was taken aback and looked down at his shirt. Colour flushed his cheeks as embarrassment washed over him. The Fiona girl seemed to have grace enough to look abashed and pushed Lip’s arm down from pointing.

The entire exchange seemed to have caught the attention of the twirling woman who now stepped in, “Don’t worry so much, Fi. I got this. Why don’t you go check out your new classroom! Grade two is a big deal, dontcha know?”

The woman winked at her daughter who gave a less than convinced look. She flashed her eyes once more to Lip and then ran off in the direction of the school.

The woman ruffled Lip’s hair and then looked to Mickey, “Hi! What’s your name, cutie?”

“Mickey,” Mickey mumbled back, still feeling heat in his cheeks.

“Mickey! Is it your first day of Head Start too, Mickey?”

He nodded, with trepidation.

“Ooo! Look Lip, a new friend! Do you think you and my Lip are going to be best friends?” the woman asked, leaning very close to Mickey’s face.

Mickey wanted to tell her, no, he did not, in fact, think that he would be best friends with Lip and would, actually, try to avoid Lip at all costs but was saved from doing so by the smiling girl yelling, “Next!”

The woman squealed and grabbed Lip’s upper arm and dragged him to the table. In her haste, she seemed to have forgotten the stroller. The baby moved his body around this way and that trying to see where his mom went but was prohibited by the straps. He settled back in his seat and turned his wide eyes on Mickey. Mickey stared back, uncomfortably, until the woman ran back and grabbed the stroller, screaming “sorry, Ian-baby.”

 

* * *

 

 

By the time Mickey actually made it into his Head Start classroom, most of the students were already seated by their name tags. Iggy had taught Mickey how to spell his name, well, his first name at least (Iggy was pretty sure no three-year-old alive could spell Milkovich), a couple weeks ago, so he was able to find his name tag, no problem.

His seat was next to a little girl whose name started with a “K” (he had one of those in his name). She had her hair in two twisty blonde braids on either side of her head, each tied with a pink bow.

“Hi,” he said shyly, after sitting down.

The girl looked at him and immediately wrinkled her nose. “You smell funny,” she said pointedly, and turned away from him.

Mickey slumped down in his chair. It was entirely possible that Head Start would not be all it was cracked up to be.

 

* * *

 

His assumption about preschool being a disappointment would prove correct in the following weeks. The girl who started with “K” was actually named Karen Jackson and requested a new seat after the first two days of Head Start. She was moved across the room to sit next to Mindy Carlson. Sometimes he caught them pointing at him and giggling behind their hands.

To replace Karen, Lip was moved next to Mickey. Mickey had been right thinking that he and Lip wouldn’t be fast friends. In fact, he was pretty sure he hated Lip. He hadn’t made any more comments about Mickey’s clothes, and he didn’t laugh at him the way Karen and her girl friends did, but he did have another flaw.

Lip Gallagher would not **shut up**.

The boy talked from bell to bell. He would talk to anyone who would listen to him and then would talk even when everyone had stopped. He talked about books he read or things he built. He talked about math and spelling and goddamn history. What three-year-old cared about history? He corrected the other students and he corrected the teacher. He made fun of the other kids to Mickey and sometimes he made fun of Mickey.

On occasion his loud mom brought him to school, always twirling and singing and dancing and wearing so many colours that it made Mickey’s eyes hurt. Usually, though, it was the girl with the frizzy hair that Mickey had seen on his first day – sometimes alone, sometimes pushing the little red headed baby in a stroller. Mickey sometimes wondered where she left the baby after she dropped Lip off when she had to go to school. One day, when she was dropping Lip off, he saw her turn right around and walk the way she came, and he had his answer.

 One day, about two months into Head Start, Mickey was dragging his feet walking to school, when suddenly, his feet stopped moving. He didn’t want to go to school and why should he have to? Why should he have to go and listen to Lip Gallagher tell him how much smarter he was than Mickey? Why should have to watch Karen Jackson point at him and giggle behind her hand?

Without giving it any more thought, Mickey turned on his heel and ran in the other direction. He must have run two miles before he finally stopped running. He looked around and realized with some alarm that he had no idea where he was. There were big, decrepit buildings surrounding him, that looked like they hadn’t been lived in for a very long time – maybe not even ever. He ran a hand along the bricks of one of the buildings.

“Hello?” he called out. There was no answer.

“Hello?!” he screamed. His voice echoed around him.

The fear that he felt was slowly being replaced by excitement. He giggled to himself. No one was here. No Lip. No Karen. No Mom. He flung the door open to one of the buildings and ran up the stairs. They creaked beneath him, threatening to give way. He called their bluff and made it all the way to the top floor. The windows were missing, but there was an expansive room in front of him. He flung his body down and started to giggle again. This was like the time in one of those books Lip never shut up about, when Tom Sawyer was hiding on Jackson’s Island. He could stay here all day, and no one would know where he was. He could come here _every_ day and his teacher and his mom and the goddamn _police_ could search and search and they’d never find him.

It wasn’t until much later in life that Mickey realized no one cared enough to go looking.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I read all comments, so please feel free to leave any criticism or ideas!


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